'Course' to a Career

For 37 years, Bushnell-Prairie City High School has had a class that provides students with real-world work experience.

The Cooperative Occupational Education experience, or COE, is a year-long business class open to senior students. It includes classroom instruction on effective work skills and career preparations and at least 15 hours of work per week at a job site. Students receive two career and technical education credits for the taking the course.

But in the face of state funding and budget cuts, B-PC is considering eliminating or restructuring the COE class.

During a March 20 B-PC Board of Eduction meeting, High School Principal John Lamb said the COE class is no longer cost-effective because one instructor spends two 80-minute block periods teaching it. One class period is spent on classroom instruction and another is spent on the paperwork and evaluations of students on their job site.

"The question is not whether we can support it next year," Lamb said, "but I can't take a teacher away from another program and put them in that position to support five to six kids for two periods."

This year, six students are taking the COE course. Some of them are employed by the school district — in one of the school offices, in the high school library or as an assistant to one of the maintenance workers. That too is no longer cost-effective during trying financial times for school districts.

"When half of COE is paid for by the district, that's another cost to the district to support the program, and that we can't do," Lamb said.

Ann Rodeffer has taught B-PC's COE class for more than 20 years and will retire at the end of the school year. She said both students and local businesses benefit from the class and it promotes a good relationship between the school district and businesses. Businesses who participate in the COE class may legally pay 75 percent of the minimum wage because they are participating in a vocational program, but most pay the full wage. The students are also not supposed to replace a permanent worker, but lend part-time help.

"They take five classes here at school in addition to their work," Rodeffer said of the COE students. "It promotes them economically, it gives them money to help pay their expenses and to possibly save for college. And it promotes them socially, so that (they) will learn skills like learning to work with co-workers, being able to listen and follow instructions, and things like that."

The COE class is worth one graduation credit for the classroom portion and two credits for the COE on-the-job work.

Some students already have a job before entering the COE class and continue with that job for the class. Other students work more than the minimum 15 hours required.

Kaitlyn Billingsley, 18, is working at M & B Furniture in Bushnell for her COE experience. She said the job has helped her learn to be around people in a working environment. She plans to work at the store over the summer.

"I help customers, and I do the billing work and I answer phone calls," she said about her work at M & B.

Although M & B usually has a male COE student to help with the heavy lifting required at the furniture store, business manager Beth Pierce hired Kaitlyn because she wanted a female to teach her some new computer skills.

"They bring in new ideas," she said. "I let Kaitlyn order a lot of furniture. Her fresh take on everything is wonderful."

Pierce herself was a COE student in 1974, also at M & B. Twenty years later, she returned to work at M & B. Like Kaitlyn, Pierce worked in the office, answered phones and did some sales.

COE student Chance Downey, 18, works for the school district as a maintenance assistant. He said he likes doing the hands-on work and has learned a lot from the job.

"I'm thinking about construction or something like that," he said. "I've learned more about mechanical stuff and how things work."

Some students are able to turn their COE experience into a career.

Betsy Rench, an insurance producer with Ramsey Financial Services in Bushnell, spent her senior year in 1990 working as a COE student at Farmers and Merchants State Bank in Bushnell and continued working there until August 2006.

She didn't intend to take the COE class, but after the bank called the high school's typing teacher looking for a good student worker, Betsy changed her mind.

"It just kind of clicked into place," she said. "I started in the summer before senior year then moved into COE."

At Western Illinois University, Rench majored in political science and continued working at the bank part-time. She eventually changed her major to finance and did another internship for college at the bank.

After college, the bank hired Rench as a full-time trust officer. When she left in 2006, she was a vice president.

"We learned a lot about responsibility and how to juggle everything," she said about her COE experience. "It gives you a dose of responsibility, and that's always a good thing."

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